Do you Dose and Dump?
Deciding what to do with children who have a minor ailment can be tough for working parents
HACKING coughs and snotty noses and kids using their sleeve as a tissue. Yuk – it’s everywhere. But what to do with your little ones when it’s not quite that bad and you’re supposed to go to work? It’s a common predicament for working parents and you can’t win either way.
I recently read about the Dose and Dump, and found I had been guilty of doing something similar once or twice. Essentially it’s the idea of dosing up your sick child with pain relief not long before child care drop-off so they appear fine on arrival. Then, you take off as quick as you can before they realise what you’ve left them with, hoping they assume the child has just come down with something as the pain relief wears off during the day.
Child care centres have strict guidelines to follow when deciding whether a child is too sick to attend. Unfortunately for those of us who don’t want our child (and subsequently the whole family) to catch another’s cold, unless the snot is green the sick child is able to stay. Fortunately for working parents, this means we can drop our snotty child off guilt-free and continue to work.
Yes, I’ve done this (minus the dosing), but was I pleased to do so? No. But some days, some weeks, it seemed like the only answer. Now I’m not talking about when your child is really sick such as pale and pasty or high temps and rashes, gastro or hand, mouth and foot disease. I mean when they’ve got a runny nose and a bit of a cough but are otherwise fit and well and staying home just seems ludicrous.
Generally I’m lucky enough to have opposite hours to my husband, so we can tag team caring for Master Five and Miss Three when not in care. However, I know many families aren’t in
DO YOU FIGURE EVERYONE ELSE HAS MADE YOUR CHILD SICK AND NOW IT’S PAYBACK?
A sick child means a day off, another day off and another day off, which isn’t a good look for any employee, no matter what anyone says
the same position and a sick child means a day off, another day off and another day off, which isn’t a good look for any employee, no matter what anyone says.
What’s the solution? To Dose and Dump or not? Do you figure everyone else has made your child sick and now it’s payback? Or do you make that early morning call to your boss once again, explaining Little Johnny has a runny nose, and you need to do the right thing, but you hope to be in tomorrow?